Using PM Skills for Market Research and Analysis: A Complete Guide

PM Skills enables AI-powered market research by combining modular Markdown-based skills with Claude slash commands to automate user segmentation, market sizing, and competitive analysis through the pm-market-research plugin.

The phuryn/pm-skills repository provides an AI-native marketplace where product managers transform raw research inputs into structured deliverables. By installing the pm-market-research plugin, teams can execute comprehensive market research workflows using reusable frameworks and end-to-end commands that process interview transcripts, survey data, and competitive intelligence into actionable insights.

The Three-Layer Architecture

PM Skills organizes its market research capabilities into three distinct layers that work together to process data and generate reports.

Skills Layer

Skills are Markdown-based specifications that encode product management frameworks. Each skill defines its purpose, input arguments, step-by-step analysis logic, and output structure. For market research, key skills include:

• user-segmentation – Defined in pm-market-research/skills/user-segmentation/SKILL.md, this skill outlines the workflow for creating behavioral segments.
• market-sizing – Located at pm-market-research/skills/market-sizing/SKILL.md, this skill provides methodology for TAM/SAM/SOM estimation.
• user-personas, market-segments, and customer-journey-map – Additional skills that handle persona creation and journey mapping.

Commands Layer

Commands are Claude-specific slash commands that chain one or more skills into complete workflows. When invoked, Claude automatically loads the referenced skills, prompts for required data, executes the skill logic (including optional web searches), and returns structured markdown reports.

Key market research commands include:

• /research-users – Orchestrates persona creation, segmentation, and journey mapping.
• /market-sizing – Estimates market size using the TAM/SAM/SOM framework.
• /competitive-analysis – Generates comparative matrices of competitor strengths and weaknesses.

Plugins Layer

Plugins package related skills and commands into installable units. The pm-market-research plugin registers its capabilities through the manifest at pm-market-research/.claude-plugin/plugin.json, making all contained skills and commands available to any Claude-compatible assistant upon installation.

Running Market Research Workflows

The following examples demonstrate how to execute specific market research tasks using PM Skills commands.

Synthesizing User Research

To generate personas and behavioral segments from raw interview data, invoke the /research-users command:

/research-users
We have 200 interview transcripts from users of our new B2B project-management tool.

This command executes a five-step workflow defined in pm-market-research/commands/research-users.md:

1. Prompts for the data source (the transcripts).
2. Calls the user-personas skill to generate 3–4 distinct personas.
3. Invokes the user-segmentation and market-segments skills to build behavioral segments.
4. Executes the customer-journey-map skill to produce a stage-by-stage journey map.
5. Returns a comprehensive markdown report following the template defined in the command file.

Estimating Market Size

For TAM/SAM/SOM calculations, use the /market-sizing command:

/market-sizing
Estimate TAM/SAM/SOM for a cloud-based time-tracking app targeting US SMBs.

Claude loads the market-sizing skill from pm-market-research/skills/market-sizing/SKILL.md, suggests web searches for recent industry reports (e.g., Gartner, Statista), and produces a structured table containing TAM, SAM, and SOM values with underlying assumptions and growth projections.

Analyzing Competitors

To perform competitive analysis, invoke:

/competitive-analysis
Analyze Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD for enterprise design-tool market.

This command utilizes the competitor-analysis skill to return a comparative matrix detailing strengths, weaknesses, and differentiation opportunities for each competitor.

Core Implementation Files

The market research functionality relies on specific files that define skills, commands, and plugin registration:

• pm-market-research/.claude-plugin/plugin.json – The plugin manifest that registers skills and commands with Claude.
• pm-market-research/skills/user-segmentation/SKILL.md – Defines the segmentation workflow and output schema.
• pm-market-research/skills/market-sizing/SKILL.md – Contains TAM/SAM/SOM methodology and best-practice notes.
• pm-market-research/commands/research-users.md – Orchestrates multiple skills into a unified user research report.
• pm-market-research/README.md – Documents available market-research skills and commands.

These Markdown-based definitions make the framework self-documenting and easily extensible, as each skill contains its own purpose, inputs, and expected outputs within its specification file.

Summary

• PM Skills provides an AI-powered marketplace for product management frameworks through the phuryn/pm-skills repository.
• The three-layer architecture (Skills, Commands, Plugins) enables modular, reusable market research workflows.
• Slash commands like /research-users, /market-sizing, and /competitive-analysis automate complex analyses by chaining multiple skills.
• Self-contained Markdown skills in paths like pm-market-research/skills/user-segmentation/SKILL.md define input schemas, analysis steps, and output formats.
• The system generates structured deliverables including personas, behavioral segments, customer journey maps, and market size estimates from unstructured raw data.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install the PM Skills market research plugin?

Install the pm-market-research plugin through your Claude-compatible assistant's plugin manager. Once installed, the plugin manifest at pm-market-research/.claude-plugin/plugin.json automatically registers all available skills and commands, making them accessible via slash commands without additional configuration.

What types of raw data can I input for user research analysis?

PM Skills accepts various unstructured data sources including interview transcripts, survey CSVs, product descriptions, and customer feedback notes. When you invoke /research-users, Claude prompts for the specific data source and processes it through the user-personas, user-segmentation, and customer-journey-map skills to produce structured outputs.

Can I use individual skills without running complete commands?

Yes. Because each skill is self-contained in its own Markdown file (such as pm-market-research/skills/market-sizing/SKILL.md), you can invoke specific skills directly from custom prompts or other plugins. This modularity allows you to use only the market-sizing skill for TAM calculations or the competitor-analysis skill for standalone competitive intelligence, without executing the full command workflow.

How does PM Skills ensure market data is current?

The framework supports optional web searches during skill execution. When running commands like /market-sizing, Claude can search for recent industry reports from sources like Gartner or Statista to populate current market figures, ensuring that TAM/SAM/SOM estimates and competitive analyses reflect the latest available data rather than static training data.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "instagit": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "instagit@latest"]
    }
  }
}